Memories
by Painsmyenvying
Summary: Sirius Black's thoughts while he is in his Azkaban cell and makes the decision to escape.


**A/N:**

**This is something I wrote AGES ago and found today in the depths of my computer. I re-read it, corrected some errors and thought I could upload it. It's not much, it's not outstanding I mean, but... I hope you like it anyway ;)**

Cheers, Lili.

Sirius Black was in his cell in Azkaban, and somehow he managed to get a piece of parchment and a quill. He felt like a mess, and also looked like a mess, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything. His once beautiful and glossy jet black hair was longer than ever before, but it didn't look like hair anymore. Now it was just something similar to the roots of the Whomping Willow. He was just as pale as a ghost, and what was worse, he was terribly skinny.

There, in one corner of his cell he was writing something, a sort of letter. No, he was writing memoirs. About his friends, the Marauders...

"_I don't know why the fuck I even care to start writing this. I suppose I don't want to die of boredom or something like that. _

_Anyway... I never thought I would miss them so much. _

_My best friends. I even couldn't tell them my last goodbye._

_James and Lily._

_It's a frightening thought to know I've been imprisoned because I've betrayed them. The best people I've ever known. I mean, like I would do that. I'd rather die. But maybe I'm going to die here anyway. If it's not out of boredom, sure the Dementors will do the rest._

_I can't stand it. I can't stand the truth. They're really dead. Voldemort killed them._

_And, in a way, Fudge is sort of right. I betrayed them.  
If I hadn't told Wormtail, if I hadn't swapped with Pettigrew, they still would be alive.  
James and Lily would still be living in their house with their little Harry._

_I can't believe it... Wormtail... He was supposed to be our damn friend! _

_Our fucking best friend, and after all what we did for him... there he goes and betrays us: James, Lily, Harry, Remus... and me. _

_Filthy rat. Why couldn't he just die or something while he was on the way to Voldemort? _

_What happened to Harry? Where was he now? Was he okay?_

_I just saw him a few times. He was so cute, with bright green eyes, just like his mother. And he had his father's face, his father's hair... that deep black hair... _

_I remember when we met for the first time. James, Lily and I. James and I were already in the Hogwarts-Express when she came in, carrying that dick of Snape with her. From that first moment, I knew neither James nor I would be good friends with Snape... or Snivellus, how we used to call him later then. That explains I was right: We weren't good friends with Snape, not at all. But _Lily_ was Snape's best friend. James could never understand that friendship and neither could I. _

_No one expected James and Lily marrying and having a son. _

_Oh, sometimes... when I think about our time at Hogwarts, it makes me laugh. It was the best time of our lives. Meeting James, Remus, yes, even Peter... and Lily. That was like nothing I've ever known. After the life I had at Grimmauld Place, with my whole family refusing to accept me how I was: Being a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin, not bothering about if my friends were purebloods, werewolves or whatever they wanted to be... Hogwarts was what I always wanted: A place where I could be happy, where I could feel like I had a home._

_I'd give anything so I could go back in time, just to do things right... for once in my life." _

"Black!" someone shouted.

Sirius jumped. He managed to stuff the parchment and the quill quickly into his cloak. Then he looked up, and saw a man. He was wearing a cloak, too, but a lot cleaner than his and he had a green bowler on his head.

It was the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge. "So, how are we today, Black?" he asked.

Sirius was startled. Why was Fudge visiting him? Then the penny dropped. Fudge hat to visit Azkaban every month. So it had to be one of these days.

"How do you expect I am, Minister, if I'm locked up in a cell in Azkaban?" Sirius answered with a weak voice. It was a really silly question. _How are we today, Black? _We are weak, bored, and nearly dead. We are surrounded by Dementors. Well, at least we're not crazy, Sirius thought. "Of course I feel totally comfortable here, I even made friends with the Dementors, you know?" he added sarcastically.

Fudge rolled his eyes and was about to go, when Sirius saw something in his hand. It was the _Daily Prophet_, and on its main page was a big photograph. He couldn't see it _that_ well, but... Was it what he thought it was?

"Minister!" he called. Fudge turned to his cell again.  
"What?"  
Sirius pointed at his right hand. "Could you give me the paper?" he asked politely.  
"Why should I?" Fudge retorted surprised.  
"Well, it's just so I've got something to read... against boredom, you know?"  
Fudge eyed him dubiously, but handed him the paper.  
"Thanks, Minister." Sirius answered simply, cracking a weak smile.  
Fudge didn't say anything, but went on to the next cell.

Sirius turned his eyes to the main page of the Prophet. It was a picture of the Weasley Family, said the subtitle of the picture. Yeah, he recognised some of them... They had won the 700 galleons-price the _Prophet_ gave every year. No, it was nothing unusual.

But then something in the picture caught his attention, remembering him _why_ he'd asked Fudge for the paper. The boy in the middle of the photograph was carrying a rat on his shoulder. A _rat_... It was strangely familiar to him. Sirius looked more closely at the rat. There was a toe missing. The rat _had lost a toe_. Could it be...? _Peter? _

Sirius doubted a bit. Was it casualty he saw a rat, so similar to Wormtail? Or was it Wormtail himself? He always knew Wormtail wasn't dead, like everyone said. Sirius had known it all the time. But no one believed him. And why? Because he was supposed to have murdered Peter and a dozen of muggles. Like he was supposed to have betrayed Lily and James to Voldemort.

The truth was he didn't do anything of that. Peter betrayed Lily and James... and Peter murdered the twelve muggles. Then he faked his own death.

So, was it Pettigrew who Sirius was seeing? _Yes,_ he thought. _I've seen him loads of times. I know how he looks like when he's an animagus. _

Sirius read through the article. The family went to Egypt... they had four sons and one daughter studying on the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... where Harry was, James and Lily's son!

Fear washed through him, the thoughts of what that meant flew at high rate through his mind. But he told himself to calm down, and then he made a decision: He had to break out. He had to save Harry. What if Voldemort came back? Pettigrew would be there, near Harry, waiting for orders... Sirius couldn't let that happen.

If he just had a little bit of help...

"_Remus... Moony! Where was he? Did he think I betrayed James and Lily to Voldemort? I'm damn sure of that. If he wouldn't believe it, he would be here visiting me._

_It was so funny when we became animagi because of Moony. In that way, we could be with him in his most difficult moments, because a werewolf is only dangerous for humans. _

_And it had its good sides, obviously. We found out so much of the school. And when we knew enough, we wrote the Marauder's Map. _

_All those moments, I really would give anything, only to live them again. Now it feels to me like I'm talking about the life of a stranger, not my own life. After all this time, it feels so unreal... or like it's something that happened ages ago... _

_I miss them so much. The many times I spent detention with James. (Really, many, many times.) The few times I did the same with Remus. The Quidditch matches... Our fights with Snivellus... When I left my parents' house and went to live with James... The Full Moons... Everything single prank we did at Hogwarts... Simply everything we did together, saying we'd never separate, we'd go through everything together, until the very end... _

_I can't understand how the fuck Peter did what he did. How he was _able_ of doing it. We all liked him; we never did or said something bad to him. And what has he done? He ran to Voldemort as soon as I told him where James lived with Harry and Lily._

_I can remember very clearly that horrible night._

_I went to visit Wormtail, but he wasn't at his house and I had had this strange feeling during the whole day. I had been feeling something weird in my stomach, something that was telling me things were up to go fucking wrong. And I wasn't wrong. Oh, how I wish I had been... I ran to James and Lily's house, the feeling kept getting worse and worse... When I got there... it was destroyed.  
From that moment, I knew it had been the worst decision of my whole damn life to convince James in taking Peter as their secret-keeper, not me. I went into the ruins and when I saw their dead bodies, I didn't want to believe it. I tried to make myself believe I was having a nightmare, but it didn't work. Of course it didn't. And still looking at them, while the tears ran down my cheeks, I knew what I had to do. _

_I started looking for Wormtail, determined to kill him once I found him. I was totally broken, pain and anger washed trough me at the same time. I had lost two of my best friends because of the cowardice of another friend... cowardice... and betrayal._

_Weeks later, I eventually found the filthy rat. But everything just got fucking worse. He obviously didn't want to die, and he knew very well I was about to kill him, because he never was much of a rival to me when it came to duelling. So he blew up the whole street, killing dozens of muggles, screaming _I _had been the one who betrayed James and Lily, and then... I suppose he transformed into a rat during the chaos of the explosion and ran away, like he always has done. _

_But when the Aurors arrived, it seemed to them that everything was _indeed_ my fault: I was a secret spy, a Death Eater, I betrayed my best friends, and I blew up that fucking street and killed Pettigrew. _

_So I came to Azkaban. _

_The first weeks were awful, the Dementors kept remembering me the night of James' and Lily's death, I thought I was losing my mind, ending up crazy and moaning some intelligible fuck like some of the prisoners here do. Weeks turned into months... months into years... and I kept my own head. _

_How could that be? _

_Maybe it was because I was really innocent. _

_I don't know why, and I don't care anymore. _

_There is just one thing I care about now._

_Wormtail is alive. And I swear by Merlin I will go out of here someday, I swear I'll find that motherfucker. I swear I will avenge James and Lily. Then I will commit the murder for which they imprisoned me." _

**A/N:  
We all know what he did after this, don't we?  
Hope you enjoyed, and review, please!**


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